Surgeons in "can job" video in hot water in Philippines

Apr 16, 2008, 5:16 GMT

Manila - Surgeons of a hospital in a central Philippine province were under fire on Wednesday for allegedly taking a video of an operation to remove a can of body spray from a male patient's bottom.

The video, which was posted for several weeks on the popular video-sharing website YouTube, showed dozens of people inside the operating room laughing and jeering as the surgeons removed the canister from the man's backside.

The surgical operation was later discovered to have been conducted at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City, 585 kilometres south of Manila.

Emmanuel Gines, the hospital's media liaison officer, said the medical centre plans to apologize to the 39-year-old patient for what happened during his operation on January 3.

Gines said an investigation into the culpability of the surgeons was being conducted, noting that the whole incident was unethical and scandalous.

Poeple who saw the video, which has already been removed from YouTube, initially thought it was a hoax until the patient came out in the media earlier in the week.

The patient, a florist, told a local media that his trouble started on December 31 last year when he became so drunk and paid an unidentified man 100 pesos (2.4 dollars) for a night of sex.

The victim said that in his drunkenness, he insulted his unknown partner by criticizing the size of his penis and before he knew it the man shoved the body spray can into his anus.

The patient said he was too drunk and weak to realize what had happened.

When he woke up, the man was gone and he felt something painful in his bottom. Initially embarrassed to seek help, the patient eventually went to the hospital for a checkup after telling his family what happened.